#12 in Korean history books
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Reddit mentions of The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia
Sentiment score: 2
Reddit mentions: 2
We found 2 Reddit mentions of The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. Here are the top ones.
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Oxford University Press, USA
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I'm not an expert by a longshot, but I think having read one entire book on North Korea puts me ahead of the average layperson-on-the-internet curve, lol. (Highly recommend that book, btw.)
And I agree that caution is necessary here, and that many people online are counting chickens. Even presuming that Un has decided to get his Nobel Peace Prize, it's a loooooong road ahead.
We still don't really understand the purges Un has done to his senior staff; we still don't really understand the deals he has with Russia, we still don't fully know how hard China has been pressing him. There's a lot of unknowns here.
And, hey, it's not impossible that all of these factors have aligned such that we're on a path to peace. It's UNLIKELY, I agree. And it's IMPOSSIBLE that things will be awesome overnight. I'd say that there are 70% odds that this is a complete bamboozle, 5% odds that Un has decided to turn the whole thing around, and 25% odds that it's something in the middle.
And that 25% is what keeps me the most hopeful, because any progress would be welcomed at this point.
Re: Un's Nobel-- At some point, you know that he's thought about it. There is a way out for him and his government, for them to keep their riches and their harems, for them to get out while the getting is "good." Un is known, like his father before him, to have his vices. The choice could be as simple as "be rich, live trapped in Pyongyang, have a harem, be constantly concerned that you'll be assassinated, and work all the time" and "be rich, live a life where you can travel, have a harem, be significantly less concerned that you'll be assassinated, get a nobel peace prize, and have significantly less actual day-to-day work to do."
Yeah, that's interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I always thought the biggest issue was the millions of people who will have to be somehow integrated into a more open Korean society and who also lack the skills of people in the south.
Andrei Lankov's book on DPRK-
https://www.amazon.com/Real-North-Korea-Politics-Stalinist/dp/0199390037